How to Play Guitar

If you pay attention to the advice I give here on my site, you will quickly learn to play guitar. You won’t achieve your full potential over night, because anything that’s worth doing takes some work, and playing the guitar is no exception. But I do aim to set you on the right track so that you can get to work on the things that matter most to improving your playing.

Let me explain how this site will give you the information you need to become a better guitarist…

Learn to Play Guitar

I’ve set up this website to help beginner guitarists who are looking for instructions on how to play guitar to improve their skills.

Online guitar lessons are the best way to learn guitar for a beginner because it lets you get up to speed quickly on all of the basics. I can still remember what it was like to be starting out, what the major sticking points were that stopped me from improving my playing and how I overcame them. I try to keep these problems in mind so I can give you the solutions before you waste your time trying to figure them out by yourself.

That’s how my online guitar lessons will get your playing to the next level, fast.
If I can have some small part in helping you to achieve your guitar playing goals then I’ll be happy.

Best Way to Learn Guitar

There are different camps when it comes to guitar tuition. Some folks insist that you absolutely must take private lessons from the beginning in order to avoid picking up bad habits. A teacher will be there to give you immediate feedback on any problems with your technique, and that’s a good thing.

But I personally think that you are better saving your money until you have reached a level of understanding and skill where you will get maximum benefit from the guidance of a professional tutor.

There’s really no point, in my opinion, paying a guy a lot of money just to tell you what you could have read in a book or for free online.

And that’s what you’ll be paying for at first if you get private guitar lessons. Until you’ve built up the muscles in your hands to the point where you can practise for a reasonable length of time, and until you’ve at least learned a few basic guitar chords, a couple of easy songs and maybe the blues guitar scales, you won’t get maximum benefit from face to face guitar lessons.

The Secret to Success

You’ve probably come to this site in search of the easiest way to learn guitar, to learn some beginner guitar songs or to get some guitar practice tips. Perhaps you already realize that there are no shortcuts to learning guitar and you’re looking for detailed information on exactly what you should be learning right now to improve your playing. Check out the article on guitar exercises to get yourself into the right mindset. The secret to success is hard work. Sorry if that bursts your bubble, but it’s better you know that now so that you don’t expect too much too soon. The more you practice, the better you get – it’s that simple!

Where to Start

Before you can start playing, you need to buy a guitar. I’ve put together a comprehensive article on how to buy a guitar, which will help you avoid many of the common pitfalls. Do you go for acoustic or electric? What kind of guitar strings should you choose? And just what is a nut, a bridge, and a humbucking pickup anyway? These and many more questions about the anatomy of a guitar are answered in the article covering the parts of a guitar.

It can be confusing to know where to start because there really is so much to learn and, without the benefit of a good guitar course, you can feel lost and confused not knowing what you should be concentrating your efforts on next. I’m often asked what the correct order is to learn the different elements of guitar playing. Without proper guidance, you might end up practicing the wrong things and making little or no progress towards your goals.

That’s where my Guitar Tuition website comes in. Here, I present a series of beginner guitar lessons in a clear and logical manner with each lesson building on the last. If you follow the instructions I present here on how to play the guitar and practice hard, you’ll get the results you deserve and will be amazing your friends and family with your new found skills before you know it.

Best Online Guitar Course

If you’ve got everything you can from the articles and guitar practice tips on this site, I’d recommend you sign up for GuitarTricks or JamPlay guitar course. In my opinion, these two are the best guitar course available online for beginners. Check out this Jamorama review to get a better idea of its pros and cons.

You could pay more for online lessons that are slicker and have more bells and whistles, but if you get either one of these two Online Guitar Courses, you’ll land yourself a solid, low-cost option that will do a better job at helping you improve your playing than many other courses because it focuses on what really matters without any of the distractions that you’d pay extra for elsewhere.

Guitar Practice Tips

I think there’s a right way and wrong way to study guitar. Many people dive in without any sort of game plan, which is the wrong way to learn and often results in frustration because you need to learn to walk before you can run. The articles you’ll find on this website set things out in a way that I think will be most helpful to ensuring a beginner fully understands the guitar and how to play it.

General Guitar Tuning

Assuming you already own a guitar, the first question most people have is, “how do I go about tuning a guitar?”. Well, fortunately, there’s an article on this site that covers general guitar tuning and even includes a guitar tuner to ensure you are pitch-perfect.

Basic Guitar Chords

Once you’ve got your guitar in tune, you’ll want to learn some basic guitar chords. Learning guitar chords in a logical manner is very important. I’d recommend starting with very basic, 2-string chords. Power chords are chords made up of just 2 notes and are the easiest chords to learn for a beginner because they are so easy to play on the fretboard.

You should then move on to mastering open chords, which are the next beginner guitar chords that you should learn. These are slightly more difficult than power chords, particularly when played on a steel strung acoustic, which can be challenging for a beginner.

After that, you should learn barre chords and then mix it all up with some chord progressions. You should make it a priority to learn some blues guitar chords. I love the blues so I’m biased, but the classic blues chord progressions are not only easy to learn but are extremely satisfying and fun to play. They also underpin many of the rock songs you’ll be familiar with so they’re a great place to start. Everyone knows them, too, so you can have fun jamming with other musicians once you’ve got these under your belt.

Blues Guitar Scales

Once you’ve got the hang of some basic chord progressions, the next step is to learn some scales across the neck. I know learning scales doesn’t sound very exciting, but there are some fun ways to practice them that can help you learn.

The blues guitar scales are quite easy to learn and are also an essential component of lead guitar, particularly if you want to be any good at improvisation, which let’s face it has to be one of the goals of any serious guitarist.

Blues guitar scales also feature as the basis for all the cool blues guitar riffs you’ll have heard from the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Once you’ve learned some scales, you can really start developing your skills and playing lead guitar, which is a little harder to get going with than simple strumming techniques. After a while, provided you follow a good practice routine, you’ll find yourself throwing in some fancy techniques like guitar harmonics and crazy string bends. The sky’s the limit!

So let’s get started! For more instructions on how to play guitar, visit the other pages on my guitar instructions website by clicking on the links in the sidebar.